Читать книгу The Price of Silence - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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Sir Wilton Oakes paced up and down the terrace in front of Priors Gate, a prey to his own moody, thoughts. Not that he looked in the least like a man who is on the verge of serious financial trouble, but all the same, the black disaster was ever-present in the back of his mind, and, with all his cunning, he could see no way out of it. And now, just when things were at their very worst, Primery had dropped upon him like a bolt from the blue. Primery, with that wonderfully agile, criminal mind of his and his positive genius for predatory schemes. It might be possible, with the aid of this extraordinary man, to lift himself far above his financial worries; but then it would be an exceedingly difficult matter to get rid of the man afterwards. Not that Sir Wilton was in the least averse to anything, however criminal, that would free him from the fetters which he had helped to bind upon himself.

So he paced up and down there in the sunshine, just after the luncheon hour, turning over the desperate state of affairs in his mind. The grand old house behind him, with its ripe, red brick wall and twisted chimneys, and wonderful old mullioned windows, was certainly no setting for vulgar and sordid crime. The place seemed to sleep there in the haze, as it had done any time in the last five hundred years, and until now no Oakes had ever stained the honour of the cradle of his race. But then, no Oakes had been in so desperate a corner as the head of it was at that particular moment. He was still brooding over the dark prospect when someone came up the steps leading from the rose garden and hailed him.

"Hello, Uncle!" the newcomer said. "You didn't expect me this afternoon. Matter of fact, a friend of mine was motoring down from town in connection with the big wedding at Heron's Nest, so I thought I would come along. That little law suit, you know."

"Oh, yes," Oakes said vaguely. "The matter of that waterway. How are you getting on with it?"

Cecil Oakes, who one day would be Sir Cecil of Priors Gate, smiled cheerfully. It was rather a remote contingency at present, and young Cecil knew only too well that the title was likely to be a barren one when it came; but with the optimism born of youth he was not worrying much about that. He was a worthy scion of his race, tall, well set-up and athletic, and if things went well with him, would some day make a big mark at the Bar. Just now, however, he was interested in a minor lawsuit, which Wilton Oakes was contesting with a neighbour over the diversion of a trout stream which ran through his property. It was only a detail, but one that later on might lead to big events.

"Well, rather slowly at present," Cecil confessed. "I know there is an old deed somewhere that has an important bearing on our case, if I can only lay hands upon it. It may be up in the Long Gallery in one of those oak chests, so I thought I would run down and have a look for it."

Sir Wilton muttered something in reply; he had more important things to occupy his mind just then. Moreover, he wanted to be alone. From somewhere in the background came the click of a typewriter, and at the sound of it Cecil pricked up his ears.

"Is Miss Venables here?" he asked.

"Yes, she's in the rose parlour," Sir Wilton explained. "Typing my letters. Most useful girl, that. A secretary is a luxury I can very ill afford, but I shouldn't like to do without Audrey Venables if I could possibly avoid it."

A moment or two later Cecil Oakes slipped away into the house and went directly to the rose parlour where the girl was at work. She looked up with a smile and a gleam of welcome in her eyes as he came in. She seemed to be a part of the picture as she sat there, and, indeed, she had known Priors Gate ever since she could remember. She had played there as a child in the time of the old baronet with Cecil Oakes for her companion, and there was not a single secret passage or sliding panel in that grand old house with which she was not acquainted. And there were secret passages, and a veritable priest's hole which had been used in the old days when the Oakes family were a power in the land and one of the pillars of the Catholic faith. There were ways and means of getting about the house which were known only to Audrey and her lover, and which the present owner of the property had long since forgotten. It would have been a great sorrow to Audrey Venables if circumstances had deprived her of a free entrance to Priors Gate.

"It is really you?" she asked. "What has brought you down here just now, Cecil?"

"Well, aren't you glad to see me?" Cecil asked.

"Oh, you know I am," the girl murmured. "And all the more so because you were not expected. And I most particularly wanted to see you. Cecil, I am not very happy."

"What's wrong?" Cecil asked tenderly. "Nothing so far as you are personally concerned, surely?"

"Oh, no. It's about your uncle. I am sure there is something wrong going on here. If you ask me what it is I cannot tell you. Of course, I know Sir Wilton is worried about money, and I know that unless something like a miracle happens, that he will either have to sell it or let Priors Gate on a long lease. But that isn't what I mean. Ever since Mr. Primery came here—"

"And who the dickens is Mr. Primery?" Cecil asked.

"Oh, I had quite forgotten. Of course, you don't know him. An old friend of your uncle's from America. A novelist and poet, and one of the handsomest men I ever saw. A sort of Byron, with the face of a Greek god and the most beautiful manners. But, unfortunately, he is a cripple, bent and broken, and hardly fit to walk by himself. Most girls would rave over him, but somehow he repels me. He is most charming and fascinating, yet for some reason or another I mistrust him. And ever since he came here so mysteriously a little time ago, your uncle has been quite different. Don't ask me to explain, because I can't."

"Oh, I must see this wonderful man," Cecil said smilingly. "Has he come to live here altogether?"

"Well, it begins to look like it," Audrey said. "Not that it is any business of mine, of course—"

"Quite right, darling," Cecil said. "Don't let's discuss him. I've only half an hour to spare. I came down here with a friend who has gone to Heron's Nest on business, and he will want to be on his way back to town again with in an hour. I understand that your friend, Miss Stella Pryor, is going to be married shortly."

"Quite right," Audrey said. "I shall miss her terribly. You have no idea what a nice girl she is."

"But they are comparative newcomers, aren't they? At any rate, I have not met them yet."

"Well, Mr. Pryor bought Heron's Nest about a year ago, and has been living here ever since. You know what a huge place it is, and what a lot of money it must cost to keep up. Mr. Pryor himself is not what you would call a gentleman, though he is very lavish and open-handed with his hospitality. I believe he made a huge fortune in America, speculating, in oils."

"Oh," Cecil cried. "It's that Pryor, is it? Bertram Pryor. Ah, yes. One of those mysterious men who come out of nowhere, like the South African diamond merchants did twenty-five years ago. You see, my practice at the Bar takes me amongst city men, and I hear a good deal about the private lives of the rising generation of financiers. And I never heard anything good about Bertram Pryor; in fact, quite the reverse. Still, nothing succeeds like success, and he certainly seems to have established himself on a very solid foundation. So you don't like him?"

"I am afraid I don't," Audrey confessed. "But Stella Pryor is quite another matter. She is a lady, and I believe her mother was one before her. She is an orphan, you see, and the man she is going to marry is more or less one of ourselves, and is not in the least influenced by the fortune that Stella will inherit one of these days. At any rate, it is going to be a very fashionable affair, and all the county will be there. The presents are wonderful. There is a pearl necklace, given to the bride by her father, which must have cost at least forty thousand pounds. On Saturday night Mr. Pryor is giving a great dinner party with a dance afterwards, and everybody in the neighbourhood will be present. I rather wonder that you haven't had an invitation."

"Oh, well, I am not in the least keen," Cecil said. "No, never mind about the Pryors, or this mysterious Byronic stranger here—let's talk about our own affairs."

It was just half an hour later when Cecil made his way up the broad oak staircase and into the long gallery which was dotted here and there with ancient oak chests filled with various papers and documents. In one of these somewhere he felt certain he would come across the ancient deeds which were so vital to his case. For the best part of a couple of hours he searched one chest after the other, until at length he pounced with a little murmur of triumph upon the very thing of which he was in search. And then, just as he was about to close the lid of the carved muniment chest, a bundle of papers in a rubber band caught his eye.

He clutched at them eagerly, and removed the band. He stood there, absolutely lost to all that was going on around him with his eyes glued on the face of those crackling papers, and then, suddenly, coming back to himself again, was aware of the fact that he was no longer alone. A man was standing there, a yard or two away, a man with the face of a Byron, and the lofty intelligence of a god, a man with a queer misshapen body, and on his countenance a smile which would have disarmed the most critical. And then, without being told, Cecil knew that this was John Primery.

"I hope I am not intruding," the latter said, in his most charming manner. "But I think you must be Mr. Cecil Oakes."

"That is quite right," Cecil said. "And I think you must be the Mr. John Primery that Miss Venables was telling me about. I am looking for a document in connection with a small law suit that Sir Wilton is interested in, and I have just been fortunate enough to find it. I suppose from first to last I must have turned out at least twenty of these old chests."

"Treasure hunting," Primery smiled. "Really a most fascinating amusement. Wonderful old house this, isn't it? You can hardly conceive how it appeals to a novelist like myself. I can imagine you finding all sorts of wonderful things in those ancient chests. Treasures of silver and gold—"

"Well, for the most part, I have found nothing but old clothes," Cecil laughed. "Wardrobes belonging to dead and gone Oakes, right back to the time of Queen Elizabeth."

"And nothing more, I suppose?"

Primery asked the question lightly enough but just for one moment those eyes of his were bent upon the papers in Cecil's hand before they were turned away again. But Cecil had not failed to see that fleeting gleam and when at length Primery strolled away with a smile and a jest upon his lips, Cecil returned the papers he had found, not to their old hiding place, but behind a panel which he slid back in the wall and then carefully replaced.

"Just as well to be cautious," he murmured to himself. "By jove, what a find, that is, of course, if those papers are what I think they are. But there is plenty of time to go into that."

Then, with the deed he had come in search of carried ostentatiously in his hand, he went back to the rose parlour again.